Tuesday, April 15, 2014

With the release of the combined FY2014 Budget and Business Plan, FY2015 Budget Request Justification, and FY2014 – 2018 Five Year Financial Plan by Amtrak, we're able to gain a little insight into the marginal expenses of running Amtrak trains according to whether they are long distance, state supported corridor trains, or part of the Northeast Corridor. This counts only fuel, T&E and OBS crew and labor, host railroad maintenance of way, host railroad performance incentives, commissary, car and locomotive maintenance and turnaround, and maintenance of way support. These figures can be found on pages 54 (for NEC), 61 (for state supported corridors), and 69 (for long distance trains). Train mile figures are in the appendix, pages 79-80. It goes without saying that calculations based on these figures are of necessity somewhat crude. These numbers do not, of course, account for expenses which are marginal at the level of the route itself, such as stations, nor for maintenance of engineering support or other such costs.

Train miles

Marginal cost per train mile

Fuel and power

T&E crew labor

OBS crew labor and support

Host RR MoW

Host RR performance incentives

Commissary provisions and management

Car & Locomotive Maintenance and Turnaround

MoW support

Long distance

14,451,000

$47.08

$142,600,000

$136,300,000

$119,900,000

$42,400,000

$14,000,000

$58,400,000

$129,200,000

$37,500,000

$9.87

$9.43

$8.30

$2.93

$0.97

$4.04

$8.94

$2.59

Northeast Corridor

9,042,000

$45.05

$55,300,000

$81,400,000

$24,800,000

$2,700,000

$800,000

$23,600,000

$125,100,000

$93,600,000

$6.12

$9.00

$2.74

$0.30

$0.09

$2.61

$13.84

$10.35

State supported

14,461,000

$30.74

$76,500,000

$120,100,000

$27,300,000

$35,500,000

$28,800,000

$14,600,000

$103,400,000

$38,300,000

$5.29

$8.31

$1.89

$2.45

$1.99

$1.01

$7.15

$2.65

It is completely unsurprising that the long distance trains have a vastly increased onboard services cost compared to the other train services. Staffing on the Northeast Corridor trains is minimal, with only a single OBS crew member on most trains, and not all state supported trains have jobs for OBS personnel. This is in stark contrast to the long distance trains which generally operate with ten or more such crew, except for the Palmetto. Nor is it surprising that the Northeast Corridor, filled with various tunnels, bridges, and half a century of deferred maintenance, has significantly increased maintenance of way expenses. What is surprising is that the fuel cost of the Northeast Corridor, running on rather cheap electricity, is still higher than state supported trains. However, we know that Amtrak's current trains in the Northeast Corridor are incredibly energy inefficient and one source notes that "the very bad aerodynamics of the Amtrak high speed trains (one AEM-7 locomotive with six Amfleet coaches) means that, at higher speeds, the TGV or X-2000 (Swedish technology) actually use half or less the energy per p-km used by Amtrak in their Northeast Corridor" (page 25). With the introduction of the ACS-64 and the NextGen HSR trains, we should see a more appropriate fuel and power cost for the Northeast Corridor.

A grain of salt should be taken when looking at the fuel & power and car & locomotive maintenance figures for the long distance trains; these numbers will be slightly skewed upwards by the Auto Train carrying a lengthy consist consisting mainly of freight cars. Somewhat surprisingly, state supported train costs appear to be lower than those for Metrolink's commuter rail, despite the fact that the Metrolink costs did not include maintenance of way expenses. This may be due to higher operational costs from Metrolink's dispatching center, costs that were not offset in that calculation by the appropriate revenues from freight and Amtrak, as well as the fact that Metrolink has a significantly higher fuel cost. The failure prone old age of the locomotives may also be a major contribution to the higher cost.

With a view of the marginal costs, one that is admittedly quite rough, we can look to the question of which, if any, trains cover their marginal costs. Those trains which cover their marginal costs of operation benefit from increased frequencies since they will help bring down the total required subsidy. This is not to say that routes below that number do not benefit from increased frequencies or that they should not be subsidized (though subsidization expenses should not exceed the social benefits).

Unfortunately, Amtrak does not provide a breakdown of train miles by route, only by the business segment. Thankfully the FRA does provide those numbers, though only to the extent of the nearest ten thousand train-miles. These figures are available in the Quarterly Rail Service Metrics and Performance Reports, specifically in Table 11, located on page 16. Using these figures and Amtrak's 2013 ticket revenue figures, I was able to come up with a rough figure for the revenue of each Amtrak route per train mile.

Revenue per train mile

Ticket revenue

Train miles

Acela

$159.89

$530,820,821

3,320,000

Northeast Regional

$109.34

$613,406,155

5,610,000

—Richmond/Newport News

$20.97

$32,916,626

1,570,000

—Lynchburg

$28.65

$11,744,966

410,000

—All Other Northeast Regional

$156.68

$568,744,563

3,630,000

New York-Albany

$67.12

$44,299,328

660,000

Pacific Surfliner

$39.36

$62,576,548

1,590,000

Carolinian

$38.16

$19,841,847

520,000

Hiawatha

$37.88

$16,287,184

430,000

Pennsylvanian

$32.60

$10,431,324

320,000

Keystone

$32.34

$44,299,328

1,370,000

Cascades

$31.14

$29,269,205

940,000

San Joaquins

$29.19

$39,401,591

1,350,000

Wolverine

$28.95

$19,398,853

670,000

Pere Marquette

$26.27

$3,152,828

120,000

Adirondack

$26.06

$7,035,147

270,000

Blue Water

$25.95

$6,228,730

240,000

Capitol Corridor

$24.09

$27,699,783

1,150,000

Maple Leaf

$23.56

$23,796,560

1,010,000

Illini/Saluki

$21.73

$9,562,149

440,000

Lincoln Service

$20.23

$16,382,439

810,000

Downeaster

$17.85

$8,211,723

460,000

Ethan Allen Express

$16.62

$2,825,134

170,000

Carl Sandburg/Illinois Zephyr

$15.64

$5,788,619

370,000

Kansas City-St. Louis

$14.04

$5,617,913

400,000

Piedmont

$13.86

$3,325,948

240,000

Heartland Flyer

$12.64

$2,022,956

160,000

Vermonter

$11.43

$5,029,712

440,000

Hoosier State

$11.16

$892,553

80,000

New York-Niagara Falls

$0.00

670,000

Auto Train

$111.37

$73,505,625

660,000

Coast Starlight

$41.95

$42,786,995

1,020,000

Lake Shore Limited

$39.66

$32,919,676

830,000

Silver Meteor

$38.78

$39,558,152

1,020,000

Capitol Limited

$37.50

$21,373,833

570,000

Empire Builder

$36.23

$67,394,779

1,860,000

Crescent

$32.89

$32,233,213

980,000

Silver Star

$31.57

$34,095,273

1,080,000

City of New Orleans

$31.53

$21,440,868

680,000

Texas Eagle

$29.73

$27,650,161

930,000

Palmetto

$29.39

$17,929,176

610,000

California Zephyr

$28.01

$49,864,217

1,780,000

Southwest Chief

$27.02

$45,129,813

1,670,000

Cardinal

$21.48

$7,733,458

360,000

Sunset Limited

$19.18

$12,275,400

640,000

A few explanatory notes are in order. First, the Springfield-New Haven Shuttles are not counted because I could find no separate figure for their train miles in the FRA data. It's possible that they are included with the Northeast Regionals, but, lacking knowledge, I excluded their revenue. Second, though the FRA includes all of the train miles for the Amtrak Virginia trains, such as from Lynchburg to Boston, Amtrak only counts the revenue from passengers who board or depart in Virginia; their actual performance is better than this indicates. Third, some non-Regional trains on the NEC, such as the Vermonter, have their revenue, expenses, and passenger numbers accounted for as Regionals until they leave the NEC; while a perfectly legitimate accounting measure, if their train-miles as reported to the FRA are not similarly adjusted, they will appear worse than reality. Finally, Empire Service trains to Buffalo apparently have their revenue counted under the Maple Leaf; I have added their train miles to those of the Maple Leaf's as a result.

It's worth noting that though the Northeast Corridor and several state supported trains cover their marginal costs of operation, the long distance trains do not, with the probable exception of the Auto Train. The Starlight comes the closest, but has additional expenses relating to the Pacific Parlour Car, I expect that the Lake Shore Limited comes the closest to meeting its actual marginal costs, rather than the rough estimate I can provide. It is also completely unsurprising that the California Zephyr, Southwest Chief, and Sunset Limited do as terribly as they do. While the other long distance trains have a variety of solid markets that they are able to serve across a significant portion of their route, frequently at either end, and many sharing that route with multiple other trains (Starlight with Surfliner, Capitol Corridor, and Cascades; Texas Eagle with Lincoln Service, etc.), these particular trains just have a whole heap of nothing for most of their routes, nothing that is often served at poor times as well, contributing to an outsized percentage of riders who take the trains from end point to end point.